Twist
by farfetched4
Summary: With her trainer close to the end of life, Reshiram is released. Her instincts take her to Zekrom, and their reunion takes an unexpected turn... Reshiram/Zekrom, Colorlessshipping.


Once at a satisfactory height above Undella Town, she glided in a wide circle, taking in all of Unova far beneath her. The Pokémon League, with which she'd become well acquainted during her trainer's long stint there. Eventually the surrounding castle had been built into the League, necessary due to the structural damage caused in that uprising. The remaining Team Plasma members had been rounded up long ago, excepting the single one her trainer truly wished to see. The one of flowing green locks, the one who had taken Zekrom away with him to travel the world, going places her trainer simply couldn't follow. She could not understand why exactly her trainer wished to see her enemy, but Reshiram had never asked, and it was not her place to pry into.

Circling west, she glanced over to Anville Town, where her trainer had enjoyed going to rest occasionally during her hectic years as Champion of Unova, and Chargestone Cave. The instant she set eyes on it, a screaming need to go there engulfed her, the burning desire to see _him _again after all this time which was, to them, not all that long.

Mindlessly, she swept her wings out and angled herself down towards the cave, into a hair-raising dive. Long banked fires within her lit, speeding her on, the all-consuming chant to see him, find him-  
About halfway down, she regained some of her senses, enough to see that her path would surely lead to a painful crash, and it simply wouldn't do if she did break her wings - she might be immortal, but she could still be immobilised by such a collision, which would be pointless. She pointed her nose up and began flapping furiously, attempting to slow her descent, thoughts racing. Would Zekrom even want to see her after all this time?

Her descent had slowed, but ultimately, she was too heavy to stop it completely, momentum carrying her onwards, until she careened none-too-lightly onto the cave's undulating roof, rock creaking underneath her. A sharp flash of pain flew up her bones at the sudden deceleration, and she cursed vehemently, despising that particular fire which made her reckless. It was unbecoming of her to act so... so stupendously, simply in the face of seeing her counterpart.

Breathing in deeply, Reshiram attempted to bring back her usual calm demeanour, to off-set the desperation in her heart. Closing her eyes, she searched for that inner fire, a pale orange glow that embodied her spirit, ignoring the electric sparks that came from somewhere close. Despite her absolute knowledge of what they were, she dismissed it: most likely he was roaming the cave, taking in the tingling sparks in the air, and had not noticed her arrival at all. Delicately, she folded her wings back around herself, and breathed in a cycle to retain hold of that fire. If she were to decide on her next course of action impartially, she would have to beset these emotions. Of course she would see him, but she did have other duties: inform Arceus of her release, see Kyurem whom she had also not seen in a long time.

"Wow Reshi, trying to make a crater like Kyurem's?"

_That voice_.

Her eyes sprung open, automatically locking on to the approaching black dragon, hovering over to her.  
"Good morning, Zekrom." Her tone, reserved and guarded, didn't appear to affect him. He alighted just in front of her, apparently judging the impact crater she had indeed formed.

"That's impressive. How come you crash-landed though? It's not like you." She narrowed her eyes, nonplussed. In the past, her trainer had flown around frequently, but as time passed, White had flown around less and less and now it had been several years since Reshiram had flown properly. Her main transport had been in the pokéball, which caused her landing skills to lack somewhat.

"It is not, as you point out, characteristic." But then, it was probably a fairly decent landing considering her actions preceding it. However, simply because she was said to be the dragon embodying truth did not mean she had to tell the entire truth. And she did not particularly savour telling Zekrom of her heart rebelling against her mind to pull herself into such a dangerous stunt. "How have you been?"

He pulled back from his inspection of her crater at her glare, folding his arms in front of him.  
"Good, good. That N guy died a long while back. He got sick, I think. So I've been free for ages! You?"  
Despite herself, she felt envy spear her heart, even though she had enjoyed her days with her trainer. He spoke so breezily; he evidently hadn't worried about her, or looked for her. The envy was overtaken by hurt, which she supressed swiftly. All this wouldn't do. It wasn't his duty to watch her every move, and nor did she want him to, so why did she feel like this?

"Fine," she murmured, stepping away from the remnants of her crash. "Perfect. Could not have been better." She spread her wings, flapping them experimentally to check that they had not been damaged. "Now that I see you are also unharmed, I must visit Arceus."

"Can't that wait?" Zekrom questioned lightly. Reshiram turned her head back to him, still prepared to fly.  
"Was there something you required?" He dipped his head, having unfolded his arms and pressed his clawed hands together in a praying motion, as she had seen some humans do. It was oddly uncharacteristic of him to appear so reticent, and that alone might have convinced her to stay.

"Well, no... But we haven't seen each other for, I don't know... How many years?" He sighed, so she folded her wings back. Zekrom _never _sighed, not in the way he was exhibiting now. "Are you so ready to leave?"

"It appeared that you did not need my intervention. I will remain if you wish." He looked up, eyes gleaming, and nodded. Reshiram found herself a little disconcerted with such an honest reply from him - he usually played along that she was too uptight for him, and stopped him doing what he wished. Somewhere within her, she knew he was right: yet the more authoritarian voice that generally reigned tended to pacify her with thoughts of _someone has to be sensible here, and it certainly isn't him_.  
"Did you want anything in particular?"  
"I want to know what you were doing, all this time!" He smiled, beckoning her forward. "Come, we can sit over there. Nobody but a few hikers climb up here, and they don't go over this side." Nodding, she followed him on legs that were, admittedly, a little shaky from the impact. Zekrom hovered: using the benefits of his manipulation of electricity to his complete advantage. She couldn't deny it was useful for going short distances, where she was left to ungracefully waddle. She did, however, beat him in the skies when she put all her effort into it, her flames acting much like some of the jet engines the humans had begun to use.

Finally reaching the spot he'd gestured to, she folded her legs beneath her as he did and looked out over the vista in front of her; a town she vaguely recognised as Driftveil laid out in the distance, port and market clearly bustling. The comparatively serene trail of Route 6 went from the city past them to the entrance to Chargestone Cave, with a heavily forested area to their right. Hidden by the landscape to her left was Mistralton Cave, Cobalion's dwelling, and she mentally noted another group she ought to speak to.  
Far, far away lay Undella Town, and somewhere within it her trainer. She couldn't stop a small pang of what might have been loneliness run through her, or sympathy. She shook it away, knowing that they had said their goodbyes. The partnership was over, but that didn't mean she had to forget.

"So..." Zekrom ventured hesitantly. Reshiram frowned slightly: he was acting most peculiarly.  
"Was your trainer adequate?" She took over, wishing for him to start, anything to make it seem like he wasn't being bothered by something.

"Yes! He was really nice until he died - he kept me out of my pokéball almost all the time, it was fantastic! I've seen so much! He went loads of places - he even went to Sinnoh, so I dropped in on Arceus - he wasn't expecting that! - and saw Palkia, and Giratina too. That was fun. The only weird thing was that... He kept saying he wanted to see 'her' again, but could never bring himself to. I think he thought he didn't deserve her or something. And then..." He trailed off, looking far into the distance. She waited a moment, then spoke.  
"Please do continue." He glanced her way, the meaning indecipherable to her.  
"He was on his way back to Unova when he died. I think he was going to see 'her' again. But he never made it." Zekrom looked sorrowful about it, as if it had been his fault. But Reshiram wasn't overly focused on him.

"'Her'?"  
"Your trainer."  
She stood at his words. White would be delighted, knowing that N had not simply left her!  
"I should-" Upon feeling the pressure on her shoulder, she looked down to see the ultimate contrast between black and white, white and black. Were they really as different as that? Switching her confused gaze from his hand to his eyes, she almost didn't catch his words telling her to carry her motions out later. Maybe he still thought she was trying to get away from him.

Sitting, she quickly regained whatever focus she'd lost, and looked away over the view. Although the sun currently reigned undisputed, there was a hint of rain in the air, and a grey cloud making its way towards Driftveil from the port. She wrinkled her snout slightly - despite water not affecting her as strongly as many fire pokémon due to her draconian heritage, it was not her favourite thing, and she always preferred to shelter during storms.

"So what were you doing over that time?" She kept her eyes on the approaching rain, and supposed her life had most likely been less exciting. Fulfilling, yet not his kind of thing. She had never been much for all the action he seemed to enjoy so much.

"Battling for her as Champion. Travelling Unova, official business. Keeping her company as her other pokémon died, and looking after her. Nothing you'd enjoy."  
He hummed in reply. Reshiram frowned, narrowing her eyes: he really never acted like he now was. _Something_ was irking him, she could tell - she just didn't know _what_. Opening her mouth to inquire, she shut it once more when he beat her to speaking.  
"Were you close? I mean, with the other members of her team. And with her." A somewhat embarrassed tone worked its way into his voice, and Reshiram blinked, finally turning her gaze from the horizon back to him. He swiftly flicked his eyes downwards, as if ashamed to have been caught watching her.  
"What kind of question, Zekrom, is that?"  
Panicked, he threw his hands up in such a human gesture it might have been amusing at any other time. Eyes widening, he looked up defensively.  
"Curious! Just curious, is all." he blurted in haste.  
"I was... close, as you put it, to all of them. They were treasured teammates and she was an honourable trainer. I am pleasured to have ever been acquainted with them, let alone friends." The black dragon appeared to relax even under her watchful gaze.  
"So you didn't have a, a mate then?"  
"Whatever is the matter with you? All these odd questions." Her tone raised slightly in frustration. It felt more like an interview!  
"What's wrong with _you_? You're acting even more uptight than usual! No 'nice to see you Zekrom' or even 'glad you're still alive' or anything! Tell me!" he shot back, defiantly meeting her gaze, sparks dancing within his scarlet eyes, and she failed to notice how he had completely deflected her question back onto her. Yet she was bound by her own will to not lie, despite how convenient it was. And lie she would not. Reshiram set blue eyes upon the advancing clouds, finding little comfort in them.

"Zekrom, I despise lying and deception above all else. Therefore, I ask of you that you do not lie to me. Do not lie because it is ideal for you. I am rather hoping you might give me an ideal truth, but please only give me the truth.  
"I hold certain... affections for you, if you will. It is not ideal, but I have yet to deceive myself to my knowledge and do not plan on it in the foreseeable future."

He remained silent, allowing the winds travelling past into the storm and the quiet rustle of the trees become the only sounds between them. Driftveil had now gone under the shadow of the clouds, and it would be a matter of minutes before it reached them.

Reshiram clicked her tongue at the unimpeded process of the storm front, and raised herself to standing once more. What was said was said: she had other things to do than wait for Zekrom's rebuttal.

"If your answer is negative, that is... fine. I must attend to my duties." She stepped far enough away from him so her wings were unlikely to strike him, and began to charge up the fires that would propel her across to Sinnoh much faster than her wings could take her. Idly, she noted how all the surrounding creatures had gone quiet: perhaps they too were listening to their conversation.

"R-Reshiram!" She did not pause at his voice exactly, but faltered slightly. Despite what she knew she had to do, her heart wished to hear his reply, and somewhere, she still hoped it would be positive. He continued without any input from her regardless. "If you, well, like me, why are you so eager to leave? I haven't even replied yet!"  
She glanced at him over her shoulder, blue eyes guarded with suppressed emotion.  
"I merely took your silence for the answer you were unwilling to say." she spoke sardonically. "Is that so wrong?"

His eyes flared up in apparent anger.  
"This is what I hate about you! You're so presumptuous about me, you just take the first thing and once you believe it to be the truth, you leave! You never give me chance to explain myself! Just because I'm the dragon of ideals doesn't mean I lie all the time, like you seem to think. You said something about an ideal truth, well why don't you _wait_ for one?" He huffed dramatically, dissipating some of his anger. "Do you hate being around me so much? You always leave when I arrive. Isn't that just to protect yourself? Did you never think of the effect it'd have on anyone else, on _me_?" He stepped forwards, closer to her, and Reshiram was filled with a compulsion to step back, fly away, just run somewhere where he was not. She loved him yet feared him - no, she feared her love for him. She could deny it no more than Kyogre could deny the sea, but it had always scared her. Were legendaries even permitted to engage in romantic relationships? Yet despite all that was running through her head, she remained exactly where she was, in spite of him getting closer and closer.

"I had no idea..."  
"You never do! See, just because someone acts happy enough doesn't necessarily mean they are. Like you hide everything you actually care about behind that persona of yours, some other people hide behind friendly facades." He clearly spoke about himself, yet Reshiram wasn't entirely sure if she could believe that. If it was true, then...

"What are you trying to say, Zekrom?" He narrowed his eyes, and Reshiram again pushed away the screaming desire to escape. The situation was so far out of her control, and she was beginning to wish she'd never come.

"You've hurt me too."  
"And how exactly do you propose that I fix that? It does not appear to me as if a mere apology would cover it, not with the way you're sounding." He was standing directly in front of her now, and glared at her defiantly. She put one foot backwards, entirely unsure as to how she was supposed to react.

"No, I guess not. But you're not even trying! Why do you back away from me?"  
Her eyes widened minutely in panic. It had gone past feeling like an interview to a full interrogation, and she was floundering: having never happened upon him acting quite so strangely before, she was at a complete quandary.

"Zekrom, I-"  
"Why?" She looked off to the side, trying to gather her thoughts. Thus, she did not quite catch his motion of grasping the thin part of her wing, close to her shoulder, and so flinched. "You're scared of me?" Hurt, or perhaps anger clouded his tone, yet she could not meet his eyes to validate her suspicions.

"No, I'm-" He cut her off once more.  
"What do you even want? You say you like me then back away from me. What is it that you want?"

"I don't know!" Reshiram resolutely maintained her gaze at the floor, although she felt him pull back just slightly with her outburst. Hissing slightly as the first few drops of rain began to fall, she sighed. "How am I supposed to know what lo- I mean, _this _is like? I have seen humans in relationships, but those parameters do not apply to us. Perhaps it is forbidden. Perhaps it is merely impossible. Perhaps it has never been tried. I simply wanted you to know, and now you have been informed!" Tugging her wing backwards to attempt to free it, she was disappointed to find that his grip did not relent. If anything, it tightened as if to prevent any escape she might have tried to make.

"Love?" She sighed resignedly at his simple yet multi-faceted question.  
"Yes, Zekrom."  
"Is this love?" Finally, Reshiram glanced up to his scarlet orbs, finding confusion there, replaced the anger from beforehand.  
"You tell me, Zekrom. Does this argument embody it? Or does it provide evidence against it?"

"If I broke your wing, would you forgive me?"  
She narrowed her eyes in confusion at the sudden twist in the topic, but his focus was where his hand lay, wrapped around her left wing. Reshiram was under no illusion that breaking her wing would be a simple task for him, yet she was oddly not afraid that he would carry out the motion.  
"I would be annoyed for a long while, and rather angry, but I would eventually forgive you. It would heal within a matter of days, and I could contact someone else to aid me if you left. Why do you inquire?" He met her gaze, curious.

"Is that love? Forgiving people for bad acts? My trainer did not believe that your trainer would forgive him, and so she couldn't... love him."

"I believe it is a little more than that, but that appears to be part of it. From what I've observed in humans, it seems to involve a multitude of emotions, and... other ceremonial acts."

"What," he began sardonically, "fear and distrust?"

"No. Love and trust and forgiveness and all that I do not understand." She smiled sadly at the ground, his feet just visible in her cloudy vision.

"You're crying?"  
Blinking, she felt a drop mix with the ever-worsening rain. What had this turned into? She was wishing she'd never said anything, kept her feelings secret from him. Now of all things, she wanted to get out of the rain, be alone and pretend nothing happened.  
"I'm not." She spoke quietly, hoping such an obvious lie would just fall by the wayside, but to no avail.  
"You're lying though."

Glancing up, she found him looking genuinely sorry about it, watching her with some kind of pity.  
"Even I, the dragon of truth, have secrets, and for secrets to be kept hidden, the occasional lie must be told. If I were a stronger being, I would have no need for necessary lies." she murmured, beginning to focus on how the rain evaporated upon hitting her warm fur, producing a veil of mist about her, swirling and undoubtedly making her form indistinct from a distance. Perhaps it was why Zekrom maintained his hold on her wing, so she could not escape as she so wanted. Reshiram was starting to become cold, suppressing shivers and she hoped she would soon be able to find cover.

"You _are _strong though. Just because you have things you want to keep from others doesn't make you weak..."

"Really, Zekrom. Tell me, would a stronger being be here, caught by you, unable to escape, somehow still loving you after eighty or so years of separation? Would they be telling you secrets that never should have seen the light of day?" She breathed heavily, breaking her fury-driven gaze at him to scowl at the floor. "They would not. A stronger being would not have reached this situation. I implore you, Zekrom, to release me to carry out my duties from which I have refrained at your request." His only reply came in the form of Zekrom's arms encircling her, along with the gentle heat of another body, and despite herself wrapped her wings around him.

"I _missed_ you. I will miss her too, I just... I must do all these things and yet I want to go back to where we fought together and flew around, doing nothing... And now, I'm... back here. I feel so... _human_." she whispered more to herself than anything. "Am I still even on the same level as you, Zekrom?" She felt him nod, and sighed. She didn't really believe that, and she'd never really been similar to him before anyway. As far apart as their colours: where she tended to fight with tactics, he used brute strength. Where she preferred grace and yet the somehow poetic harshness of truth, he was more flashy, dismissing many realities for an idyllic view on life. Where she were more like Castelia City, business-like and honest, he were more akin to Nimbasa: the glitter and fun of the high life, ignoring the fact that no one could live like that constantly. They were entirely separate, perhaps even more so than Kyogre and Groudon. While at some point they'd been one being - long ago, so long ago that she only just recalls the feeling of her conscience gradually coalescing in one side of the then unified creature - they certainly were no longer similar. That was all they were, opposites: she'd heard some humans calling them Yin and Yang, the idea of diametrically opposite concepts.

"You don't believe me, do you?" At his voice, she made some kind of choked sound of strangled agreement, immediately cursing inwardly that she might be so unintentionally obvious. Zekrom pulled backwards, resting his massive three-clawed hands upon her shoulders, and watching her sincerely.  
"We don't have to be the _same _to be on the same level. And I've decided."

She tilted her head in confusion.  
"Decided? On what?"  
He maintained his gaze, perhaps even a hint of a smile emanating from him, of all things.

"We can go see Arceus together. If you want." He paused, then reconsidered something. "As a unit."

"Unit? Do you possibly mean a couple?" He grinned, and Reshiram found herself wearing a weak smile of bewilderment.  
"Well, that's what the humans call it. Yes. I assume that was the ideal truth you wanted earlier. And it is true. I'm... I'm not lying." In shock, she watched him for a long moment, into red eyes that beamed with sincerity, before laughing slightly in disbelief.

"That sounds very agreeable."

For once, Reshiram decided that pondering on possible repercussions could wait.

* * *

Hey look, a fic without a line break! It ended up being pretty long actually. I wanted to write something with these two, because the game presents ideals and truth to be completely separate things, but... Are there not such things as ideal truths? I believe that there are overlaps...

And I just like this pairing.

Sorry if it's a bit random/constantly shifting. I'm a little torn over this, but I think I like it enough to post it... I hope you did enjoy it?


End file.
